I think that Jason and a caller he was speaking to were right on the money (no pun intended) when they said that Bitcoin was probably the product of a thinktank or group that wants to create wide demand for just such a system.
In the late 90's and early 2000's I was participating on a group list called webcinema. The discussion was mostly focused around the neat new tools of digital video, non-linear editing, quicktime movie files etc. There was a veteran filmmaker on that list who had done a lot of business with big corporations as a consultant and when the conversation turned to Napster (which was then one of THE first peer to peer media sharing applications) this veteran filmmaker said something very interesting. He basically said that although Napster had a visage of being egalitarian and anti-corporate that it was basically the product of big corporations that wanted to condition people to obtain and eventually purchase all their music and movies on-line, digitally. This was years before music / movies became available on places like the Apple Store or Amazon, so I have to wonder if he was right after all.
So, will Bitcoin be to money what Napster seems to be to on-line media purchasing? Could be. The only thing that suggests it may not is that we already have debit and credit cards and people making purchases, on-line and off, with those. Why would they need Bitcoin, or something like it, to exercise more control than what they have? I guess we'll have to wait and see how things turn out.
In the late 90's and early 2000's I was participating on a group list called webcinema. The discussion was mostly focused around the neat new tools of digital video, non-linear editing, quicktime movie files etc. There was a veteran filmmaker on that list who had done a lot of business with big corporations as a consultant and when the conversation turned to Napster (which was then one of THE first peer to peer media sharing applications) this veteran filmmaker said something very interesting. He basically said that although Napster had a visage of being egalitarian and anti-corporate that it was basically the product of big corporations that wanted to condition people to obtain and eventually purchase all their music and movies on-line, digitally. This was years before music / movies became available on places like the Apple Store or Amazon, so I have to wonder if he was right after all.
So, will Bitcoin be to money what Napster seems to be to on-line media purchasing? Could be. The only thing that suggests it may not is that we already have debit and credit cards and people making purchases, on-line and off, with those. Why would they need Bitcoin, or something like it, to exercise more control than what they have? I guess we'll have to wait and see how things turn out.